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Barrett mistaken, delusional

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Also by Ryan Masse:

Rockin' around the what? (November 29, 2007)
A downside to diversity, an upside to change (November 16, 2007)
High schoolers can handle ads (November 8, 2007)
Health providers must list prices (November 1, 2007)
Employee policies in need of upgrade (October 25, 2007)

by Ryan Masse

Thursday, October 12, 2006

Other than Gov. Jim Doyle and gubernatorial hopeful Mark Green, perhaps no man in Wisconsin has received more media attention this year than Kevin Barrett.

Previously a lowly folklore lecturer at the University of Wisconsin, Mr. Barrett rocketed to national fame this summer as he enunciated his belief that the Bush administration orchestrated the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, as a pretext for invading Afghanistan and Iraq. Politicians, educators and pundits argued at length as to whether his theories made him an acceptable instructor for the Introduction to Islam course he was scheduled to teach — and indeed is teaching — this semester at UW.

On the subject of his conspiracy theories, there's little that hasn't been said. All angles to the Barrett story have been approached a myriad of times.

Lost amid the conspiracy hullabaloo, however, is another issue concerning Mr. Barrett — an issue that, given its presence in one of his textbooks, is of some import for students of his class: Israel. Mr. Barrett's views on the Jewish state may not obsess him like the 9/11 "truth" movement does, but they do exist. Simply put, Mr. Barrett's opinions toward Israel are at best delusional with no hint of reality and at worst anti-Semitic with enough vitriol to make Mel Gibson blush.

Where Mr. Barrett resides on the scale between ignorance and bigotry is something people can decide for themselves. It should be noted that no spot on that spectrum is particularly desirable in a university teacher, though.

For evidence, one need look no further than to a letter Mr. Barrett wrote to The Badger Herald in 2002, during the height of a wave of Palestinian terrorist attacks known as the al-Aqsa Intifada. A UW graduate student at the time, Mr. Barrett accused Israel of "systematic genocide" and "ethnic cleansing" and said then-Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's goal "is to establish a state populated only by a Jewish master race, with such inferior races as Arabs expelled or exterminated. To that end, Israeli soldiers and snipers have been shooting Palestinian children for sport for more than 10 years … Sharon's Israel is becoming the mirror image of Nazi Germany, and Palestine is the new Warsaw ghetto."

One can certainly criticize Israeli policies without being anti-Semitic and can even be vehemently anti-Zionist, as Mr. Barrett is, without being anti-Semitic. I would argue such anti-Zionists are overly idealistic and ignore the ample evidence that suggests a one-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would be utterly untenable, but that doesn't necessarily make them bigoted.

However, when one starts to litter his dialogue concerning Israel with terms like genocide and allusions to the Third Reich, red flags have to be raised. Such language reflects not a legitimate effort to critique Israeli policies, but an attempt to demonize Israel and its inhabitants with as insulting of language as possible. It incites hate, not honest dialogue.

Further, on facts alone, Mr. Barrett's claims are laughable. Throughout its history, Israel has taken extreme caution to minimize civilian casualties in combat, a devotion not shared in the least by the suicide bombers or rocket launchers who randomly attack the residential homes, restaurants and nightclubs in the Jewish state. If genocidal ambitions are harbored in the Middle East, it's certainly not on the Israeli side. Pure numbers debunk Israeli-perpetrated genocide — given the rapidly growing Palestinian population, if Israel truly was committing genocide, they'd be the least effective practitioners of it in history.

In addition to genocide, Mr. Barrett accuses Israel, a country that is home to well over a million Arabs, of ethnic cleansing. Curiously, he never seeks to apply the term to the Arab states that expelled Jews wholesale following Israel's War of Independence — or to the fact that Jews can't even legally live in Jordan. In Mr. Barrett's book, irrational scorn is befitting only of Israel.

Does all this make Mr. Barrett an anti-Semite? As I said: maybe, maybe not. It was only one letter, and even for a man apparently taken to quoting long sections of Mein Kampf during media interviews (as he did with WKOW-TV this summer), that's not a lot to go on.

To his credit, Mr. Barrett told me in an e-mail that he now would not "phrase things exactly the same way" as he did in 2002. He also acknowledged that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a little more complicated than his letter made it out to be, recognizing that terrorists do exist on the Palestinian side (though he added the ridiculous legitimizing qualifier that they are "defenders"). And, to be fair, Mr. Barrett's views are not anything that Noam Chomsky and other far-left academics haven't been spouting off for years.

Unfortunately, though, Mr. Barrett's new phrasing is only marginally better than his terminology of old. According to a WKOW-TV study of one of the textbooks for his class this fall, students may soon be reading about the "apartheid" state of Israel in the required textbook "9/11 and American Empire: Muslims, Jews, and Christians Speak Out." Mr. Barrett's essay in the book will not be required reading.

While perhaps not as vile as the comparison to Nazi Germany, calling Israel the spitting image of mid-20th century South Africa is still an accusation wrought with ignorance. Consider this admittedly condensed rebuttal: Israel is the most secular state in the Middle East, the region's lone bastion of free speech and rights for women and gays, a country where the non-Jewish minority has full suffrage and the right to hold office, a nation where discrimination based on religion or ethnicity in hiring or housing practices is prohibited. Try getting all that as a Jew in an Arab country. Heck, try getting all that as an Arab in an Arab country. You won't come close.

So despite imperfections, does Israel practice apartheid? Hardly. Does Mr. Barrett know what he's talking about? Hardly. Is that a problem for UW? Certainly.

Luckily, like the 9/11 conspiracy theories, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not a major theme of the Introduction to Islam class — probably considerably less a part of it. It comes up in a few books, but it's never the main theme, according to Mr. Barrett.

But it raises concerns nonetheless. Some say that with freedom comes responsibility. Surely then with academic freedom, the principle that all Barrett-backers rely on, comes academic responsibility — that is, instructors present researched material in a subject area in which they are trained.

Academic freedom is mocked when unsubstantiated and wholly uninformed opinions, the kind that lead a man to equate Zionism with Nazism (or apartheid), masquerade as legitimate scholarship.

Ryan Masse (rmasse@badgerherald.com) is the editorial board chairman of The Badger Herald.

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Anonymous (October 12, 2006 @ 7:39am):

Masse, why don't you teach a class and write a book. You could call the class, "the stuff we learned all four years of high school." You could call the book, "What the Government Thinks You Should Believe."

Anonymous (October 12, 2006 @ 8:34am):

You dope. Noam Chomsky is no conspiracy theorist--unless you can point to one. "To be fair", I doubt you have ever picked up a book by Noam Chomsky. Feel free to email me. m1schuld@wmich.edu

Anonymous (October 12, 2006 @ 9:32am):

excellent article.

Anonymous (October 12, 2006 @ 10:06am):

Ryan,

Thank you for this well-reasoned, articulate and honest assessment of Mr. Barrett's views and your just as keen analysis of Israel.

At a time when it has become fashionable for different elements on college campuses to denigrate and demonize Israel, there are those articles or editorials which remind me that there is some semblance of moderation and pragmatism in this debate.

You are undoubtedly correct that it is not anti-semitic to criticize Israel and some of its policies. Like any country, it has its faults and weaknesses. But the route Mr. Barrett and some of his sympathizers have taken, with their baseless and unsubstantiated attacks, lend nothing to the debate and are utterly misinforming.

I hope not just the student population, but also the university faculty take note of your piece. I am positive it represents a majority of the thinking of those on UW's campus and those throughout the state.

JM

Anonymous (October 12, 2006 @ 10:31am):

The man is a self-important ego-maniac whose messiah complex makes him believe that he has some special knowledge that will save us all. Just like all conspiracy theorists. Sounds like an insecure nerd that reads too many comic books to me, but I understand why the University is fighting for him.

This situation seems similar to the ACLU defending nazi's right to assemble. The University has an academic freedom battle to fight, and they have to do so with this joker because next time it might be a challenge to legitimate academics (like evolution, which certainly could be the next target). So, like the ACLU, they're stuck defending morons on principle because the principle itself is so important. An unfortunate situation to say the least.

Anonymous (October 12, 2006 @ 10:44am):

Fabulous article.

Isn't it funny how it is always the faculty from non-subjects like folklore, native american studies, etc that speak with that unique blend of stupidity and hystrionics.

The fact that you slipped through the tenure process in a subject better suited for community college does not give you the right to make a laughingstock of a respected university.

Anonymous (October 12, 2006 @ 12:29pm):

"Laughingstock of a respected university"

Wow, Wisconsin was really just teetering on not being a respected university and then Barrett came along. Boom, now anyone with a Wisconsin degree is an anti-semite and 9/11 conspiracy theorist.

Thanks, Professor Barrett, for representing the views of all faculty, staff, and student body.

Anonymous (October 12, 2006 @ 7:02pm):

Mr. Masse,

Your most recent article was undeniably the most uninformed editorial I have read in quite some time. After spending the summer in Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza, and having studied the Israeli/Palestinian conflict for many years I would like to clue you in on a few basic facts:

"Systematic genocide" is indeed an overstatement of Israel's policy towards Arabs in the country, but let me remind you that the state of Israel was founded on the belief that the Jews deserved a place where they could all live together, in a vast majority, to evade their persecution. THIS DID AND STILL DOES REQUIRE ETHNICALLY CLEANSING THE AREA OF NON-JEWS, THE MAJORITY GROUP BEFORE THE TURN OF THE 20th CENTURY WHEN ZIONISM FIRST CAUGHT ON! Google search: "Theodore Hertzl".

You must also realize that Barret's comments about the state of Israel were aimed at the STATE, not the PEOPLE, as you so righteously proclaimed ("...demonize Israel and its inhabitants..."). Google search: "common sense".

To say that Israel "has taken extreme caution to minimize civilian casualties in combat" may be the most ridiculous satement you came up with in this article. Google search: "Six Day War 1967, Lebanon 1982, Lebanon 2006" (just to get you started).

And I certainly wish I did have time to comment on the rest of the fallacies so prevalent in your article. But let me tell you that I have seen the blood of 10 year old boys and girls on the walls of refugee homes in the West Bank and Gaza, pointlessly splattered by bullets from IDF snipers. I have been to the Knesset (do you even know what this is?) library and read the explicit sentiments of past and current Israeli legislatures to ethnically cleanse Israel of non-Jews. And to say, "despite imperfections Israel does not practice apartheid" is unacceptable. Imperfections, subtleties and deep knowledge of the complexity of these issues is beyond necessary - it is the extensive prequesite that is needed to comment on this issue - and it's a requirement that you do not fulfill.

Professor G

Anonymous (October 15, 2006 @ 4:58pm):

Professor G,
I am greatly disappointed in your post in response to Ryan Masse. In a most condescending manner, you suggest Ryan google things like the Six-Day War and even "common sense", implying that he has never heard of them.
As someone who has allegedly studied the conflict and even spent time in the Middle East, you ought to know that the occasional xenophobic and ultra-nationalist comments from the Israeli Right Wing are, and always have been, vastly outnumbered by the mainstream Israeli voices who have advocated peace with their Arab neighbors, and who are willing to pay almost any price for it.
Your statement about the snipers and the blood of 10-year old children implies that you, too, believe that the Israeli soldiers shoot children wontonly. That is, they engage in the worst kind of atrocity - shooting children for sport, to borrow a phrase from Kevin Barret - and that they do this systematically, all the time, for fun. You couldn't be more wrong, and if you really spent all that time studying and living in the mideast, you'd know this.
I don't know who you really are, but I suspect you didn't study the Arab/Israeli conflict at all. Instead, your comment suggests that you went through a crash-course of anti-Israeli propaganda, at most. I am a realist, willing to admit the negatives in the Israeli society and policies, but I'm afraid I could never really talk to you. Your view is so removed from reality, that, were I to meet you half-way, we'd still be out in la-la-land...

Anonymous (October 20, 2006 @ 8:43pm):

Ryan,
I'm not sure if kissing Israel's buttocks is still a surefire way to make it to Newsweek anymore. Thanks to the freedom of the internet, people don't buy propaganda anymore. But if you feel the need to stifle criticism of Israel by talking about red flags/anti-semitism, then perhaps you should explore a career on Capitol Hill. That is a great place to not discuss the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. It is also an excellent place to ignore what really happened on 9/11, for that matter.
-TK